3-21-12 Blog Update

Hello gentlemen and ladies!

So, as you may have noticed, I haven't posted on the blog for a little while. I have been confronted with that monstrous beast that is preparation for grad school, specifically writing a hell of a lot of scholarship essays, which has consumed my writing energies and prevented me from keeping up on the blog. I'm not quite done with it all, but I wanted to tell you that this will change.

But perhaps not in a way you might expect. After all, it isn't like grad school will present me with a festival of free time. Instead, I might not easily manage finding time for writing at all, though I remain optimistic. I wanted to write this to explain that I'm going to be trying something new. A personal goal for myself.

Here are my goals for this blog:

• I want to continue contributing and writing to this blog until my fingers get arthritis.
• I want to see my writing style and experience change and grow from this.
• I want to encourage guest writers to write about whatever is most thought provoking for them in all the subjects the blog hits on (see Categories).
• At some point, I want to possibly migrate this blog to another service/provider/whatever-the-hell-you'd-call-it, because of the limitations of blogspot.

Now I'm going to talk briefly about each of these in turn.

The first two goals are for me alone. Currently, this is going to manifest in me writing less frequent posts that make up for their lack of quantity by focusing on quality. I want to try and make a goal of writing less reviews and instead writing and musing upon aspects of things that I read/see/do/whatever that intrigue me and that I can talk about generally. For example, in my last two posts on the game Mass Effect 2, they haven't been reviews so much as me talking about aspects of the game that made me think about certain aspects of the story or gameplay. By doing so, I believe that I can do some cross-genre/cross-media conversation that will be more thought provoking as well as escape my tendency of the past few months to keep myself to a tight review mentality and regimen. Of course, this is subject to change later as, in this little corner of the Internet, I am God and I can do what I please.

Guest writers. You all are awesome, and I love having your voices and unique interests present themselves on the blog. If you have any friends who would like to try it out, feel free to let me know and I can help set that up. Also, feel free to hit me up with questions on how the blog is doing or if you want to try something new that you aren't sure I'd be cool with. I very much enjoy the special posts you all have made. The recent post of “Three Movies to Avoid” comes to mind, as well as “Grimm vs Once Upon a Time” and posts akin to that that pit one film/TV show/book against another. I'm also reminded of when we compared our “Top Five Movies that Influenced My Life”. These exercises are fun, original, and often hilariously entertaining to read.

Finally, the blog migration. This isn't going to happen anytime soon since I'm just too busy and disinclined to look into it right now, but I dislike a number of things about this blog that could be better. For example, writing comments is kind of a pain in the ass for people new to the blog, and they don't feel readily available. And I really don't like how hard it is to access older posts. Sure, we have a Categories line, but have you ever tried to use it? It simply chronologically displays posts of that category from most to least recent without allowing you to do anything but hit “Older Posts” over and over without any hint of what lies beneath. The Blog Archive, while nice to have, could be more helpful. Things like this prevent the blog from reaching more people and striking out into the Internet.

That said, The Inquisitive Loon definitely *is* popular. Within a few days we'll have reached 150,000 views, which is quite an immense number from where I'm standing. However, it could do even better than that, and I still haven't reached my goal of having complete strangers discuss blog posts among themselves in the comments. At some point, I'm going to make an effort to see how I can make the blog more accessible and displayed to an even greater amount of people. We'll see how it goes, and any advice any of you have to offer on that would definitely be appreciated.

On that note, I was going to do a handful of mini-reviews on things I've done and seen over the past few weeks, but I think I'm actually going to just address those in a few sentences and then save my writing energies for the first of my aforementioned new future posts that will be less review and more musing/opinion. So all I'll say is:

Underworld: Awakening a miserable fusion of fan fiction and script-writing that should be avoided at all costs.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman is one of the best, enthralling, and readable biographies I've ever read about a powerless girl who grows into a mature and beautiful woman who commands an empire.

Guild Wars is an enjoyable older MMORPG that will appeal particularly to those people who enjoy tactical games and the manipulation of skills akin to collectible card games of old.

University education's price hikes would be far more tolerable if they simply presented them in a lump sum altogether instead of hitting you with endless little charges on technology, tuition deposits, fingerprint scans, and bullshit like that. I speak from direct, recent experience.

And that's all I can think of for now. Inquisitive Loon, signing out!